NINE
SOCIETY ISLANDS
EVERY EVENING, as the setting sun turns the sky above Tahiti’s lagoon the colour of a provençal rosé, they’re out there practising: dozens of six-man canoe teams, brown bodies bent forward, arms rising and falling in unison, slim outrigger canoes scarcely visible above the waterline.
In two days’ time it will be the real thing, the start of the annual Hawaiiki Nui Va’a canoe race, three days of paddling across open seas between Huahine, Raiatea, Tahaa and Bora Bora, the Society Islands, half an hour’s flight north-west of Tahiti. Canoe racing is an ardent pursuit throughout French Polynesia, as keenly contested as road cycling races are in France.
When, two days later, I arrive at the waterfront town of Fare in Huahine, outrigger canoes are everywhere, having been shipped here on a French naval vessel. The canoes are eight metres long, made in Papeete from moulded fibreglass, brightly coloured and emblazoned with the logos of their sponsors – banks, oil companies, breweries and other French Polynesian firms. Earlier today there was a traditional ceremony to bless the impending race, followed by dancing, feasting and entertainment from a Hawaiian rock band doing excellent covers of the Eagles.
This is the biggest thing that happens in Fare, the capital town of Huahine, an island of towering mountains, secluded villages and deeply indented bays, whose winding roads, lined with breadfruit trees, coconut palms and vanilla plantations, all lead back to the Fare waterfront. On a tour of the island, which is one of the loveliest I’ve been on, I’m taken to the top of a bluff which overlooks the bay separating Huahine-Nui (Big Huahine) from its neighbour, Huahine-Iti (Little Huahine), the two islands being joined by an elegant bridge. After my guide, a sophisticated French-Tahitian woman called Maria, has pointed out various land features, I ask her, ‘What does “Huahine” mean?’
She thinks hard for a moment. ‘“Hine” is our word for “woman”, and “hua” means …’ She licks her lips, then concludes with utmost seriousness: ‘Hua … you would say in English … is “cunt”.’ She nods. ‘Yes, that’s what Huahine means, “Cunt Island”.’
Trying not to show my surprise at this information, I reply, ‘Oh, well, that must have made it a popular place.’ I think again. ‘In the old days, I mean.’
Maria nods, thoughtfully. ‘Yes.’ Then she laughs. ‘But it’s nice today, too.’
Moored in Fare harbour is my floating home for the next five days, Haumana, or ‘Spirit of Peace’. She is to follow the marathon canoe race – a kind of Tour de France on water – which has been held every year since 1992. Haumana is a thirty-six-metre, three-level catamaran with thirteen cabins, each with full-sized windows, a bathroom and air-conditioning. On the top deck there’s a big lounge, bar and open terrace. The cabins are on the middle deck, and the lower deck has a restaurant which seats forty people. An inflatable tender transfers me to the ship, and I immediately rejoice in the air-conditioning. On shore, it’s scorching.
‘Votre baggage, M’sieur?’
‘Ah … oui … merci.’
The crew member, Tomita, picks up my suitcase and carries it to my cabin. The case is heavy but she carries it as if it were a croissant. She wears a tight-fitting red pareo, her black hair is elaborately coiffured and she has a curvaceous figure, including very prominent breasts, but she has the build of a construction worker. Like most of the crew of Haumana, she is a raerae, or transvestite. Though initially disconcerting, Tomita and her team become completely accepted by the ship’s passengers over the next few days. In the evenings, on the top deck, they dance the seductive Tahitian tamure, put on a fashion parade, weave baskets from pandanus, and play the guitar and ukulele as the sun goes down. They’re unfailingly jolly and attentive.
While the canoeists practise on the lagoon, and the music of the Hawaiian band reverberates around the harbour, we have our first evening meal, prepared by a young French chef, Emeric Berthelemy. Befitting a man who has married a Tahitian, his menu is a mélange of French flair and Pacific ingredients: taro soup followed by mahi mahi in a vanilla sauce with green salad, apple and nuts, and a dessert of banana and chocolate pancakes. The taro soup is a little sludgy, but the rest is delectable. Mahi mahi, a prized game fish in the tropical Pacific, is superb eating, and the flavour of its firm white flesh is enhanced by the subtle aroma of the vanilla sauce. Vanilla is the Society Islands’ main cash crop, and it thrives in the damp, humus-rich soils.
At 7.30 the next morning a green flag goes up and the canoeists are off. The harbour waters turn to a churning mass as eighty-four outrigger canoes burst away from the start line and head for the passage through the reef. The first destination is Raiatea, whose pastel-grey profile is visible forty-five kilometres due west. It’s an island that many New Zealand Maori believe is Hawaiiki, the spiritual homeland of their ancestors. On it stands Taputapuatea, Polynesia’s most sacred marae.
Within minutes Huahine’s pass has been breached, the field has spread and we’re in open sea, pursuing the outriggers. For the purposes of the chase, I’ve been transferred to a poti marara, or speedboat (‘marara’ being a flying fish and ‘poti’ the transliteration of ‘boat’). The skipper is a stocky, barefoot Tahitian in his thirties called Louis, who controls his boat from the bow with a vertical PVC rudder. Wearing a baggy yellow singlet, blue shorts and a black back-to-front baseball cap, Louis grins a lot. When he is not grinning he is laughing uproariously and waving to the other speedboat skippers. I’ve never seen anyone laugh so much. Any boat that passes, anything that anyone calls to him, Louis breaks into hysterical laughter. When we strike a big launch’s wake and nearly roll, he laughs so much he almost goes overboard. When one of his mates on another speedboat shouts something at him about his misjudgement, Louis becomes almost paralytic.
But Louis is obviously an experienced operator because he keeps us on course for Raiatea, close enough to the paddling canoeists without interfering with their course, and manages to avoid hitting any of the big pleasure boats which are streaming along beside us. There’s a huge flotilla out here now – every type of vessel, from French vermouth palaces whose decks are covered with beautiful topless girls, to wallowing old wooden ferries and an aluminium dinghy containing two Tahitians, a man and a woman, perched on stackable plastic chairs and controlling their little boat with a rope tied to the tiller. Race marshals on jet-skis, stern flags flying, zip around the fleet, keeping it a safe distance from the racers.
And the racing crews are amazing. In thirty degrees of morning heat they’re paddling at about sixty strokes per minute, their arms rising and falling in constant unison, kept in regular beat by the calls of the last man of the six, and pausing only to pass water bottles down the line to replace their streaming body fluids. The teams wear sun-hats but no life-jackets, and they dig their paddles ferociously as they propel their canoes over the ocean swells. Even watching from the relative comfort of our boat the heat is enervating. What it must be like in the canoes, sealed in from the waist down and paddling ceaselessly, can only be imagined.
All around us the indigo sea is lumpy, the sky a brilliant blue. Gradually Raiatea comes into sharper focus, its peaks seeming to rise from the sea. The spectator fleet, including our speedboat, streaks ahead to witness the finish on the waterfront at Uturoa, the island’s main town. The winning canoe appears, three and a half hours and over 12,000 strokes after starting, to acclaim from the waiting crowd. It’s Number 22, sponsored by the oil company which is the leading rival of the race’s main sponsor. It’s a fine example of ambush marketing, but no one’s complaining. Winning has been an heroic achievement.
There’s a great welcome for all the crews as they stagger across the line then go ashore for a hose-down at the town marina and a feast. For me it’s back to Haumana for a few beers to help me recover from the fatigue induced by watching more than 500 superbly fit young men exhaust themselves at sea. I’m also preparing for Emeric’s next dinner: poisson cru, shrimps in curry sauce and coconut milk, coconut pie, and fresh pawpaw, mango and melon. In Tahiti the poisson cru is usually bonito, which abounds in the sea outside the reefs. The experts tell me that the secret to preparing the dish is to rinse the cubed fish in sea water, and add the garlic, coconut milk and the juice of fresh limes only about ten minutes before serving it.
There is time the following day for a visit to Raiatea’s special locations.
Haumana cruises first into the Baie de Faaroa, a deep ria, or inlet, in the island’s eastern coast and a beautiful, sheltered haven. French Polynesia’s only navigable river flows down to this bay from an extinct volcano, Toomaru, the island’s highest peak. The place where the river debouches into the bay provided an important shipyard for the early Polynesians. Here they converted the giant rain-forest trees into double-hulled canoes, launched them into the bay and set forth on voyages to other, distant parts of Polynesia, including New Zealand. Before a voyage began, the canoe was blessed by priests at their most sacred marae, Taputapuatea, a little way down the coast. Haumana ties up to a jetty a stroll away from Taputapuatea. The marae, built right over this level promontory, consists of a large area of weathered coral rock, hundreds of slabs of dark grey stone, hewn flat and laid straight on to the ground to form a huge square. On the lagoonward side, larger slabs of rock have been placed upright in a line, so they resemble a row of high-backed chairs. In front of the row one upright slab stands alone. The dirt between the stones is pocked with the burrows of land crabs.
When we approach a single upright slab of rock, our Tahitian guide pats it affectionately. ‘Here victims were sacrificed to the gods Taaroa, Tane or Oro. Since about the eleventh century, many, many human sacrifices have been made here. Their necks were put against this rock and their throats were slashed open with stone knives.’
‘Who were these victims?’ I ask nervously.
Nodding in appreciation of my interest, he replies, ‘The priests chose them. The victims had to be strong and healthy, not people wounded in battle, because the old gods demanded much blood as a sacrifice.’
Wandering across to where the marae meets the sea, I feel both in awe and in fear of this place – awed by its age and size, but uneasy at the thought of so much violent death. At the foot of several of the upright stones are other stones from other places, tributes placed by people who have made a pilgrimage to this vast, sacred site, which is to the Polynesians what Mecca is to Muslims. The guide tells me the stones have come from the farthest extremes of the Polynesian triangle – Hawaii, Easter Island and New Zealand.
The next stage of the canoe race, from Raiatea to Tahaa, is relatively undemanding, being only twenty-six kilometres and confined to the smoother lagoon waters inside the enclosing reefs of both islands. But it’s still ferociously contested, with a winning time of just under two hours. At Tahaa’s main village, Tapuamu, the crews carry the canoes ashore on their shoulders and wash themselves and their vessels down by the marina, before turning in early. The third, final and longest (fifty-eight kilometre) stage of the race will take place next day between Tahaa and Bora Bora, whose dramatic profile we can already see on the horizon.
Bora Bora is justifiably known as one of the most beautiful islands in the world. Its volcanic core thrusts straight up from the ocean like an ancient green molar. The whole island is enclosed by a lagoon whose waters are varying shades of blinding blue. The coral sands of a ring of motus feather into the lagoon. From the deck of Haumana, I’m reminded immediately of the Rogers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific. Bora Bora wasn’t the model for James A. Michener’s mystical Bali Hai – that was an island in Vanuatu – but it could still be the template.
That night I read a short story by Alex du Prel, a European writer who lives on Moorea. The story is about a Polynesian woman on Bora Bora called Madame Dorita. The narrator of the story goes to Madame Dorita’s house to fix her washing machine and, while there, sees a beautifully made chest filled with old but perfectly maintained tools. Intrigued, the narrator asks about the chest and Madame Dorita, who is in her fifties, tells him the story of how it came into her possession.
The chest belonged to an American, one of the several thousand soldiers stationed on Bora Bora for nearly four years during World War II. At the age of sixteen Mademoiselle Dorita fell in love with one of the Americans, a young man called Mike, and became pregnant by him. Shortly afterwards the A-bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Americans pulled out of the bases in Polynesia and occupied Japan. Mike told the girl he had to leave, but promised to return and get her and the baby. He gave her his tool-chest to look after until he did so, showing her how to oil the tools and polish the chest to keep them in perfect condition.
The girl followed his instructions faithfully, even when French soldiers came to Bora Bora to loot the island of everything the Americans had left behind. To stop the chest falling into the hands of the French the young girl carried it into the mountains and hid it in one of the caves where her ancestors placed the bones of their dead. And every week she went there and oiled the tools. Mike never returned. Mademoiselle Dorita bore his daughter, then married a local man and had children by him, but she still believed, thirty-five years after he left, that one day Mike would return to her.
Touched by this tale, the narrator decides to trace the American. During a trip to the United States, he learns at the Department of Veterans’ Administration that Mike married in 1951, had a family, and is now living in the small town of Rio Minas, New Mexico. He drives there to meet him.
He finds himself in a small, dusty town, hostile to outsiders and palpably illiberal in outlook. He has no difficulty finding Mike, but does not disclose the real purpose of his visit. Mike Shay is a pillar of the small, inward-looking community, and only too pleased to talk about ‘his’ war. When the conversation is steered towards Bora Bora, he talks of the island in great detail, but never once mentions Madame Dorita. When at last the narrator raises the issue of fraternisation with local women, the American becomes first secretive, then confiding. Yes, he had had local girls during his time on Bora Bora – ‘native women’, as he calls them. He even had a ‘Jap’ girl later on, in Nagoya. Mike, it seems, is an old-fashioned Southern racist who hardly gave his Polynesian lover a second thought.
The narrator concludes his story by saying that he never told anyone about his trip to New Mexico and that, as far as he knows, Madame Dorita continues to shine Mike’s tools and keep them in the beautiful chest. The story, called ‘The Hope Chest’, ends with some interesting statistics. The 4,400 Americans stationed on Bora Bora during World War II fathered 132 children by local women. Only one came back to get his vahine and marry her.
Not long afterwards, while on Moorea, I look up Alex du Prel and discover he publishes Tahiti Pacifique, a monthly magazine of political comment and cultural issues of French Polynesia and Pacific islands, a courageous enterprise. A balding, shambling bear of a man, Alex greets me genially and suggests we go out to lunch at a nearby waterfront village.
There, over Hinano beer, we chat and commiserate over our fates, the way writers inevitably do when they meet. Then I ask Alex, because his nationality seems a little obscure, ‘Where were you born?’ In the US Virgin Islands, he tells me, to an American father and a German mother. When? ‘Nineteen forty-four,’ he replies. Same year as me. ‘Which month?’ He puts his beer glass down. ‘January. I’m a Capricorn.’ I stare at my companion. ‘Date?’ ‘The fifteenth,’ he replies, matter of factly. ‘That’s my birthday, too,’ I say. We burst out laughing, then drink a toast to each other. For the first time in my life I have met a twin.
Unusually, there’s only one navigable passage through Bora Bora’s reef, Teavanui, on the island’s western side. Now the whole fleet – outriggers, speedboats and spectator vessels – is streaming towards it. The sea is again swelly, the going very tough for the canoeists. Louis speeds and swerves his boat among the swells, shouting at his mates in the other boats and laughing hysterically at everything they say when they shout back. Flying fish, startled out of the water by the flotilla, skim the water ahead of us.
It’s three and a half hours before the canoes sweep through the passage, cross the wide lagoon and dig their way into Matira Bay, where they are greeted with acclaim by locals, visitors, a battery of news photographers and Monsieur Gaston Flosse, French Polynesia’s president, who looks just like New Zealand novelist Maurice Gee. Several of the outrigger crews collapse with heat exhaustion and have to be revived by first-aid workers. Astonishingly, after dropping me off in the shallows by the beach and seeing who’s won the race –Te Pae Ti’a from Rangiroa atoll in the Tuamotu archipelago – Louis the boatman turns his speedboat around and stands in the bow, revving the engine.
‘What are you doing?’ I ask. ‘Aren’t you coming to watch the show?’
Louis points at the horizon and shouts, ‘No. I go back now. Home to Huahine. Fishing tomorrow!’ He gives his insane laugh once more, pulls his baseball cap down hard on his head, waves goodbye and guns the motor, heading for Teavanui Pass and the long open-sea crossing back to Fare. He hasn’t even set foot ashore.
Tahitian dance teams perform on a barge moored just off Matira beach. Gaston Flosse makes a speech and presents the trophies. Gaston, born on Mangareva Island in the Gambier group, has been president of the French Polynesia Territorial Assembly continuously since 1991 and for other terms before that. He has, in every sense of the word, done very well for himself. In 2002 a Paris court cleared him of corruption charges, and in 2003 his territory was paid an official visit by his close friend and patron, French president Jacques Chirac. Gaston’s slogan could well have been ‘Polynesie Français, c’est moi’. France gives its most prized overseas territory many millions of dollars of development money every year. Gaston, now in his seventies, also has a great fondness for beautiful young women – his latest wife is in her early twenties. Then, in May 2004, the unthinkable happened: Gaston Flosse was voted out of office and replaced as president by a long-time pro-independence campaigner, Oscar Temaru. A new political era for French Polynesia had begun.
The winning Hawaiiki Nui Vaka teams are interviewed for international television, then it’s party time again. The Hawaiian rock band pounds out its Eagles numbers while food and drink are served in a big marquee by the beach. In the evening there’s a dance in nearby Anau village. The transvestites from Haumana – Tomita, Sabine, Sophie and Tiare – attend, wearing their best frocks and high heels. But it’s been a big day, and no one stays late. We stroll back to the wharf under the stars, then transfer by launch to Haumana. As we glide across the lagoon in the warm blackness, the guitar strains of ‘Hotel California’ echo out from the marquee, where the canoe teams are still celebrating their achievement.
Hawaiiki Nui Va’a is one of the great sporting events of the South Pacific, a testimony to discipline, endurance and fortitude. Watching the crews pack up their canoes, then leaving Haumana, I’m aware that I’ve witnessed something very special over these last few days. Before we climb into the boat’s tender and motor away to the airport, Tomita beams goodbye, murmurs, ‘Au revoir M’sieur Graeme,’ and kisses me hard on both cheeks, her dark whiskers rasping my face. When I’m a safe distance away, I blow back a double kiss.
Later, as my plane soars over Bora Bora and heads east for Huahine, I stare down at the lagoon, the motus, the main town of Vaitape and the island’s three great mountains, Otemanu, Pahia and Hue. I’m wondering in which mountain Madame Dorita hid her Hope Chest.